Grizzly Bear: ‘Veckatimest’
By Alexander De Petro
The writer of this review offers no apologies for the puns (of varying degrees of awfulness) within — you’ll have to just grin and bear it.
Clearly not a band that hibernates, Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear have released Veckatimest, their third full-length album in five years, hot on the heels of two excellent contributions to the Red Hot Organisation’s latest charity compilation Dark Was The Night. Although some tracks have been ‘around’ for over a year (first single ‘Two Weeks’ was performed on The Late Show in June 2008), Veckatimest is definitely an album that needs to be listened to, and appreciated, as a whole. 2006’sYellow House and its centerpiece ‘Knife’, the anthem for disaffected teenage angst that never was, gave us a good indication of where the path Grizzly Bear could take. Veckatimest represents a confident and bold step forward and is simply their best album to date. Aside from the stylistic similarities between the two albums, there is also a shared tone and timbre which is distinctly built upon on Veckatimest: this is the sign of a band that has reached maturity, showing that they don’t need a gimmicky reinvention to herald a new album, nor are they content to rehash old material.
Exercising their Second Amendment right to bear arms, on Veckatimest Grizzly Bear utilize an impressive arsenal of instruments and production tricks, crafting an innovative and original album without any of the sonic pitfalls of ‘experimental’ music. Album opener ‘Southern Point’ serves as a microcosm for the sounds and styles explored throughout. The influences are familiar, yet hard to pinpoint. There’s something of a Talking Heads aspect evident in singer Droste’s brazen vocals, and the way in which the vocals complement the ebb and flow of the song. ‘Southern Point’ is at once fast-paced and somber, rock and pop and folk, and an example of why Veckatimest is one of the most well-produced albums in recent memory.
Like other decent recent releases in a similar vein, such as Dr. Dog’s 2008 album Fate, Veckatimest is retro-revisionist rather than retro-revivalist or (shudder) retro-referentialist. Different styles and genres are presented throughout, but there are few, if any, moments of total derivation. The penultimate track ‘I Live With You’ is probably the best example of this. Part neo-noir film-score and part gothic ballad, choral backing vocals are overlaid upon Droste’s reverb-heavy lead vocals, interspersed with a haunting saxophone line reminiscent of Clarence Clemons at his haunting best. ‘I Live With You’ successfully merges several genres and styles, while managing to remain its own distinct sound.
Even at its poppiest moments, the raucous ‘WHOA WHOA’ leading into the rolling chorus of ‘Two Weeks’ for example, Veckatimest is strikingly heavy. Of course we’ve heard this phenomenon before, pop music that isn’t quite pop music — consider Neon Bible as a recent example, or basically everything The Pixies ever recorded — but Grizzly Bear have infused their somewhat experimental rock sound with just the right level of pop references, structures and hooks. The end result is an album of many strengths and very few weaknesses. Consider the album art as a perfect representation of the music: like an intricate jigsaw, each track is decidedly individual, yet they come together to form a cogent whole; the image itself may be distorted and shattered, but it’s a single image nonetheless.
Album closer ‘Foreground’ is a three and a half minutes of pure sublimity. With its haunting piano introduction leading into ambient, non-threatening strings combined with Droste’s most stripped-down vocal performance, ‘Foreground’ has the potential to be another over-worked, sappy ballad (consider ‘Family Tree’ from TV on the Radio’s 2008 album Dear Science). However, again a testament to the strength of the album’s production, ‘Foreground’ is nothing less than perfect: as an album closer it leaves you wanting more, almost forcing you to skip back to track one once it’s finished.
Veckatimest is an album of great depth with, like all great art, a certain level of mystery. Droste’s vocals are dreamy and, at times, transcendental: indie-rock’s arrogance laced with dream pop’s insecurity (or perhaps that’s the other way around?). While there is nothing completely ‘new’ about this album, it is fresh and original, building on the distinct sound Grizzly Bear have been crafting for a few years now but yet offering the listener a variety of novel sounds, textures and moments. Grizzly Bear are no longer cubs: Veckatimest is simply one of the albums of 2009.
